in Mein Kampf, and despite the fact that Germany was

aboutto embark on the biggest rearmament programme

ever conducted in peacetime, Hitler stuck to the mantra,
expressed in an interview with Sir John Foster
Fraser of The Daily Telegraph, that “no one in
Germany who went through the War wants to
repeat the experience.”15 However, he also said in
the same interview that “the fate of Germany was
dependent not on colonies or dominions, but on its
Eastern borders”—a phrase which was interpreted as
a desire to gain back the territory lost as a
result of thepeace treaties at the end of the First
World War. It was clear that it would be
entirely Hitler’s decision as to how and when
fundamental Nazi policywould be introduced to the
German people. Goebbels wrote that there would be no
more voting, and that now the “Führer’s personality”
was what counted.16 Just two days before he wrote those
words Goebbels had helped organise mass public
celebrations on the occasion of Hitler’s forty-fourth
birthday—aphysical manifestation of the way in whichthe
personality of the new chancellor would now drive German
politics. From now on, until Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday
party in 1945 at the ReichChancellery of Berlin,
20 April would be treated as a sacred date in
the German calendar. As a consequence of all
the attention that had been focused on Hitler,
beginning with his attempt to unseat Hindenburg as
president the year before, an interesting phenomenon
was taking place. Some of those who had
thought Hitler was unimpressive in the past were now
beginning to see him as charismatic. Fridolin von
Spaun, for example, a sympathiser of the Nazissince
the early 1920s, had first witnessed Hitler at a rally
in 1923. “There stood Ludendorff,a mighty figurein
uniform with his decorations,” he says. “And a small figure
 stood next to him—nowhere near as imposing, in quite
a shabby coat. And I paid no attention to him.
Then I asked later, ‘Who was that who stood nearby [to
Ludendorff]?’ Well, that was Hitler, the leader of
the National Socialists.”17 But now nearly ten years
later, von Spaun encountered Hitler once again and
formed an entirely different opinion. At a
dinner, attended by a large number of Nazi
sympathisers, Spaun saw Hitler looking at him. He
felt Hitler’s eyes bore into him and as a result
became immediately convinced of his sincerity. Then Hitler
got up to talk to someone and held on to the
back of Spaun’s chair. “And then I felt a trembling
from his fingers penetrating me. I actually felt it.
But not a nervous trembling. RatherI felt: this man,
this body, is only the tool for implementing a big,
all-powerfulwill here on earth.That’s a miracle in my
view.” So, as far as von Spaun was concerned, Hitler
had been transformed from an insignificant man in a
shabby coat to a “tool for implementing a big, all-
powerful will.” Of course, much had changed in the ten
years or so between Spaun’s two encounters with Hitler.
But chiefly what had altered was Spaun’s own personal
perception of the man. By the time he was moved
by Hitler’s touch, Spaun knew that he was in
the presence of themost famous man in Germany.
Moreover, Spaun had always been predisposed to
believe in the Right-wing, völkisch politics that Hitler
espoused. Hitler himself hadn’t altered that much. It
was just that people like Spaun were now readyto
believe in his charisma. However, Hitler’s charisma
had obvious limits.There were still those who worked
closely with him—even served in his Cabinet—who
remained immune to it. Von Papen, of course, was
one such person, and another was the media
tycoon Alfred Hugenberg. Both of them would
cause Hitler problems as they gradually realised that their
 hope of “taming” the Nazisand using them for their own ends
had been hopelessly naïve. Hugenberg in particular had
anticipated that he would possess immense power in
Hitler’s government as Minister of Economics,
Food and Agriculture.Unlike Hitler, Hugenberg possessed
impressive academic and business qualifications—he held
a doctorate in economics and had been chairman of
one of the most important German industrial concerns,
Krupp steel. But Hitler still out-manoeuvred him. Once the
Enabling Law was passed the Cabinet ceased to have
any real power. Hitler wanted it to continue to
function, but only in a ceremonial way. Hugenberg finally
realised how Hitler would sideline him when his
subordinate, the State Secretary in the Ministry of
Economics, a committed Nazi called Fritz Reinhardt,
put forward a proposal to create new jobs that
Hugenberg was against. Hitler chose to support
Reinhardt and there was nothing that Hugenberg could do
aboutit.18